At Least These Thoughts Occur Before the Service

As I was passing by my church on this fine Sunday morning (I use the term "my" rather loosely here as I haven't been attending regularly and, as you can see by the first part of this sentence, I was just passing by rather than walking in) I noticed there was quite a crowd rushing in to get the good seats.  I would like to pause here for a minute to note that in church, unlike sporting events, good seats is not an objective, but is rather a subjective concept and a study in individual valuation.  If you review the crowd in a church, you will usually see that the younger crowd sticks to the back with the older crowd being in the front.  The younger crowd values a quick exit, while the older crowd values being able to see and hear all the happenings.  In my particular denomination, Catholicism, you sit up front to get snack time first, but you are the last to leave.  It is all about which you value more.  Either way, I have digressed too far, as this particular note is not about the good seats, just that people arrive early to get them, wherever they are.  And I guess middle seats suck.

What struck me on this particular jaunt by my church (shit, there I go again, and there I go swearing.  Maybe I should stop in next time for confession.) was thinking about what those people would do that arrived early for the good seats.  You have a lot of time to kill, and iPhones aren't yet an accepted form of media in a church setting, as I have found out on too many a football Saturday where weddings happen to interfere.  There really isn't much to do.

One common thing that I have seen many churches do is have their choirs help the congregation practice some portion of the songs that will be used during the service.  Finally, we have arrived at the point for this post:  Who are we practicing for?  Let's start with the premise that the church service is for an apparently omniscient being, so He already has heard all of the songs during practice, and He even knows how the song will end up during the actual service.  So practicing for Him doesn't make sense.  In fact, with all of the repetitive singing of all of the songs every Sunday around the world, you would think less practice would be a better service, as it would be a reprieve from the nagging child sound He must usually hear every day. 

If practice isn't for the omniscient one, then who else is there?  It can't be for those who showed up early, as they were there during practice.  For this exercise of practicing singing before a church service to make sense, then, there really can only be one answer.  It must be an effort to show up the late arrivers in the middle seats.  The early arrivers want to point out how much better they can sing the songs, and there is no escape from the trap that is the middle seat.